Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Spleen by Charles Baudelaire


Charles Baudelaire

Information about Charles Baudelaire
  • Born in Paris, France on April 9, 1821.
  • Produced translations of stories by Edgar Allan Poe.
  • Wrote art criticism essays for various journals.
  • Suffered from a number of chronic conditions, brought on by stress and his long term use of a form of opium.
  • Known for his book of poems Les Fleurs du mal.
Étienne Carjat, Portrait of Charles Baudelaire, circa 1862.jpg

Summary
The speaker uses first person and then transitions to talking about himself in third person. The speaker is not talking to anyone in the poem; he seems to just be telling a story about his life. The speaker is old and unhappy with his life. He has wealth but it seems like he’s done everything to the point where he feels like he cannot be happy anymore. In the last sentence he talks about how he is becoming old and forgetful. He is unfortunately losing some of his mental capability, specifically his memory.

Imagery and Figurative Language
The speaker states,“I’m like the king of a rain-country, rich."The speaker compares himself to a wealthy king of a rain-country land. The rain-country land could be a simile for his sadness and pity for himself.

The speaker claims, “Our tyrants’ solace in senility, he cannot warm up his shot corpse. Whose food is syrup-green Lethean ooze, not blood.” The speaker is losing his memory and some of his mental capabilities due to old age. The Lethean ooze is a symbol for his loss of memory because in Greek mythology, the Lethean is a river in Hades that causes forgetfulness for people who drink from it. The speaker seems hopeless and depressed during these lines. The ooze is also part of sight imagery.

There is a metaphor for how the speaker's glorious bed will soon become his deathbed:“His bed of fleur-de-lys becomes a tomb.” Also Fleur-de-lys are French decoration or symbol that is sometimes associated with the French crown. This is a metaphor for how his glorious bed will soon become his deathbed.

Tone
Throughout the poem, the tone is depressed and hopeless. The word “rain-country” started the poem with a gloomy tone. Also when the speaker says that “nothing cheers him up” he sounds hopeless in trying to find happiness. In the last few lines, the speaker pities himself and the poem wraps up in a tone where he seems to accept that he will not be happy again.

Theme
The speaker expresses that once you get old, there is no way to reverse the clock and become youthful again. Aging is inevitable. The speaker is bored and depressed even though he has activities and people around him that he can get with his money. The money and power that he has does not give him any happiness or enjoyment. He is aging and he shows the reader that once you get old, you get old. The metaphor about the Lethean ooze relates because the river poisoned his mind of forgetting things, and there is not a cure.

Other Aspects
The title of the poem seems to have a big importance. The spleen is an important organ that filters the blood from harmful things. In the poem, the speaker's “spleen” no longer functions properly because the “poisoned element” has gotten to him.

The poem is broken up into lines. The sentences run on to the next line and are all clumped together. When he makes a comparison, the first item is at the end of the line and then the second item is part of the other line. This gives it a separation of ideas.

Other translations of the French poem show different meanings. I chose this one because the metaphors used show a clearer theme as opposed to other translations that I read.

3 comments:

  1. It was really helpful that you defined the words from Greek mythology; that really clarified the poem. I really like your idea about the meaning of the title. The spleen, which filters pathogens out of the blood, is a perfect metaphor for the poisoning that is occurring in the speaker's life. It might also be significant that the spleen was once considered a vestigial organ. Vestigial organs no longer have a purpose, but remain in the body anyways because they don't cause harm. In this sense, the speaker is sort of like the spleen. He is rich, but has been forgotten, and his life no longer seems to have a purpose, just like the spleen. But in reality, his life is important, and his wealth, like a broken spleen, is poisoning him.

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  3. At first reading the poem seemed to me of a old and rich man, but he seems to be a waste of a person to have it all, but How he describes himself taking in the syrup-green lethean ooze by his tyrant makes the poem really interesting, how with all his wealth hes forced to age. "The scholar who makes his gold cannot invent washes that can cleanse this poison element" which is a comparison of poison to death. Since he can't do much about it The poem seems to be about a speakers who's just waiting for his fleur-de-lys bed to turn to a tomb.

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